~ Omar, with a bit of cheese

Milk Roll

My new Milk Roll tin arrived today. I could not wait to try it out, and immediately washed and dried it, oiled it, and set some bread to knead in the Kenwood (my back is misbehaving this week)

The mould is manufactured by Mermaid and they have a Milk Roll recipe on their site. This seemed an appropriate place to begin my experiments.

Timeless Milk Loaf

Ingredients

350g strong plain white flour

¼ tspn salt (optional)

1 x 6g sachet fast-acting microfine dried yeast

1 tablespoon full-fat dried milk powder (optional)

220ml warm milk

2 tablespoons sunflower or (mild) olive oil

a little oil for greasing

extra flour for dusting

Method

Place the flour, (salt if desired), yeast and milk powder (if using) in a mixing bowl. Stir to combine.

Add all the liquid and mix to a soft dough. If the dough is sticky, add a little extra flour.

Knead the dough for 10 minutes until it becomes smooth, springy and ‘silky’ to the touch.

Lightly and thoroughly grease the Milk Roll tin with oil. Shape the dough into a cylinder, the same length as the tin.

Place the dough in the base of the tin, engage the tabs and clip the tin together. Set the tin aside in a warm place to allow the bread to rise inside the tin. Watch for the dough through the vision hole in the tin top.

Heat the oven to 220°C/Gas 7. As soon as the dough can be seen rising towards the hole, place the (closed) tin in the oven and bake for 25 minutes (fan-assisted oven) or for 30 minutes (non fan-assisted).

Set the tin aside for 2-3 minutes before unclipping it and turning the bread out on to a cooling rack.

I followed the recipe exactly – but omitted the milk powder. I also had to use skimmed milk, as that was all that I had to hand. The Kenwood did a good job on the dough and it needed no extra attention by hand. It was very well-tempered and shaped nicely when required. I popped it in the tin and fastened the lid on and left it on top of the Rayburn to rise.

After an hour, there was no sign of the dough in the peephole.

After two hours, there was still no sign of the dough in the peephole. I decided that I should prep the oven and come back when it was hot.

I was writing a rather deep blog post elsewhere, forgot about time, and was gone for another hour. The dough had ‘sploded. It was squidging out through all available openings.

What could I do? Nothing. So I popped it in the oven for the required 25 minutes.

The loaf took some separating from the tin. I chiselled off all the extraneous bits first, then had to run a knife point around all the edges. The main part of the tin behaved perfectly though and the actual loaf showed no sign of sticking.

It’s too dark to take photos but I can describe the outcome – a cylindrical ridged loaf, not quite perfect in shape at the extremities. A crust that is rather too dark and crisp for a milk roll. A crumb that is soft and open and airy and even. We had a few slices for tea and found it agreeable.

Next time: same recipe, 10 degrees and five minutes less. Made with full cream milk. I’ll get photographs too.

Purchasing Info: I got mine from Harts of Stur. Having foolishly missed the Lakeland sell-off at £9.99, Harts was the best price+postage combination that I could find. Many places were sold out of this item and it appears to be difficult to source just now.